Cloudreach 9:44 Rifter Arrival

[faderifting]

WHO: New rifters & their rescuers.
WHAT: Welcome to Thedas.
WHEN: Cloudreach 10, 9:44
WHERE: Amaranthine
NOTES: This is the arrival log for all new rifters, open also to current characters who would participate in their recovery. New players can also assume everyone survives and arrives back in Kirkwall within a couple of days, but please note there will be a brief quarantine period when they won't be permitted to leave the Gallows, to get them up to speed while ensuring they're not diseased or otherwise going to kill anyone, before they're set loose on the city.

You were asleep—whether deeply or fitfully, falling unconscious for the last time in a pool of blood or just resting your eyes for a moment—and then you were not. And wherever you were was not, anymore, replaced by nothing but the sensation of falling into endless, bottomless nothing. If this were still a dream, you would wake before you hit the ground. You can't die in a dream, they say. In some worlds.

In this world, bathed in the light of a flare of too-bright, greenish light you will find yourself hitting mossy cobblestones with an unforgiving smack. You're alive, and you're fine, except for the narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here that now glows out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions.

Above you is a shifting, crystalline tear in reality; beyond that, gray clouds and a sea breeze, framed by the high walls surrounding the city you've landed in. There are people on the walls, some of them armored and armed, all of them briefly and collectively paralyzed by the sight below.

Don't let their terror go to your head. It's not you that has them intimidated, nor is it any of the humans (or Qunari) who are sprawled out on the ground around you, nor is it the assortment of unfamiliar—to them, not to you, perhaps to you it's very familiar—junk that's spilled out as well, most notably some flaming metallic debris and a giant wooden cross.

It's the beings that are coming out after you, almost as if in pursuit. Two are drifting, spindly things with six spidery limbs in addition to grasping skeletal arms, eager to grab hold of anyone who comes too close and fill their field of vision with swirling darkness and corner-of-the-eye glimpses of whatever frightens them. Several more most closely resemble trees, perhaps, with half-melted squids for heads—which might not sound particularly scary, fine, but their ability to dive into the ground and resurface anywhere with rasping screams helps on that front.

All of these things would like to kill you, and the people around you, and the people on the walls, and perhaps the other people screaming and scurrying into taverns and shops for cover. But you're not alone. Out of those same taverns and shops come people who do seem to know what they're doing; many are wearing a symbol that looks a bit like a hairy eyeball being pieced through by a sword, and at least a couple of them seem to know what they're doing. Almost like they've been waiting for you. In fact, exactly like they've been waiting for you.

---

AFTERWARDS, the grateful citizens of the City of Amarenthine might provide a drink, a meal, or a place to tend to wounds before everyone sets back toward Kirkwall. It's not a long trip, but one that requires boarding a ship to cross a narrow sea. It will be a rough, stormy journey, but there won't be any demons.

Comments

[strangel]

Once I pretended to be one of our sisters who Sarah was also pretending to be and filmed a confession to a murder to blackmail Sarah.

Once I pretended to be Sarah so I could get close enough to the woman who birthed us to kill her.

She gives Jester a long, silent look.

"Sometimes we make prank," she agrees, slowly. "I am better at than Sarah."

Sarah was very clever, quick thinker. Alley cat making sure her survival. Helena was more imaginative, more dangerous, set the traps.

Reaching out slowly, anticipating Jester being likely to snatch the treat away until the moment she has successfully secured it in hand, Helena is as tense and poised as a cat preparing to leap. And then the dougnut is in hand, and she seems to go sort of limp.

Belatedly, when she's already taken a chomp out of the doughnut: "Thank you."

[the_cleric]

"You're wel-come," Jester replies, in a cheerful sing-song. If she noticed Helena's long pause or weird lead-up to accepting the gift of the chocolate doughnut, she doesn't give any sign of it. For all the interest she's showing, this all could have been a totally normal practice and pattern of response.

Already she's jealous of Helena, getting to eat a doughnut while she stands here not eating a doughnut. But her supply is limited, until she can find a bakery. And then what if that bakery doesn't have doughnuts? Oh, shit.

"Oh, shit," Jester says aloud. To the casual observer, this is said apparently apropos of nothing. Helena probably won't even notice. "Helena. Do you think they have doughnuts here?"

[strangel]

She chews the doughnut slowly, a little bit of frosting crumbling at the corner of her mouth and sticking there before falling.

"I don't know." Slowly said, as she thinks about it. The not knowing is horrifying. She stares at the bit of doughnut that she didn't shove into her mouth, and holds it towards Jester.

"You might need this back."